The Ashes.

Where the name comes from

Australia beat England at The Oval in August 1882, by seven runs, their first Test win on English soil. The Sporting Times marked it with a mock obituary: English cricket had died, and the body would be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. Ivo Bligh sailed south that winter to win them back, took the series 2-1, and was handed a small terracotta urn in Melbourne. It was a private gift rather than a trophy, which is why it has never travelled as one. The original lives in the MCC Museum at Lord’s; the crystal replica is what captains lift. Everything from that first tour onward is counted here, 72 series and 340 Tests.

Why a drawn series settles nothing

The urn is retained, not reset. It changes hands only when a side wins a series outright, so a level scoreline is a successful defence for the holder and a wasted tour for the challenger. 6 of the 72 series have finished drawn: 1938, 1962/63, 1965/66, 1968, 1972, 2019. The most recent of those, in 2019, ended 2-2 with Australia already holding the urn from 2017/18, so they kept it without winning. That asymmetry shapes the cricket. The holder can bat out a draw and still leave with the urn, while the challenger has to force a result somewhere in five Tests. A stubborn last-day rearguard is worth a great deal more to one side than the other.

Home advantage, measured

Both sides win more at home, and the split is sharper than the overall series count suggests. Australia have won 20 of the 36 series staged in Australia. England have won 18 of the 36 played in England. Away from home the two records are identical: 14 series wins each. Test by Test the difference is in the draws. In Australia, 26 of 172 Tests have been drawn. In England the figure is 66 of 168. English weather and English pitches save the losing side; five clear days of Australian sun rarely do.

The series that shaped the rivalry

Bodyline, in 1932/33, is the one that still gets argued about. England won 4-1 with Harold Larwood bowling fast, short and at the body to a stacked leg-side field, a plan built to stop Don Bradman. It worked, it very nearly caused a diplomatic incident, and the fielding restrictions that followed were written because of it. Sixteen years later Bradman’s 1948 side won 4-0 in England and went through the tour unbeaten, which is how they became the Invincibles. He is still the leading run scorer in Ashes cricket, 5,028 runs at 89.78, some 1,392 clear of JB Hobbs.

England’s 1981 revival began with them following on at Headingley: Ian Botham made 149 not out, Bob Willis took eight for 43, and a match England had been quoted at 500-1 to win turned the series, which finished 3-1. The 2005 series, won 2-1 after Edgbaston went to two runs, was England’s first Ashes win since 1986/87. Australia answered with the whitewashes: all 3 five-Test 5-0 results in Ashes history are theirs, in 1920/21, 2006/07, 2013/14. Mitchell Johnson took 37 wickets in the 2013/14 sweep. In 2019 Ben Stokes made 135 not out at Headingley to chase 359 with one wicket standing, and the series was drawn 2-2, so Australia kept the urn. They then won 4-0 at home in 2021/22.

How these figures are compiled

Three tables sit behind this page: every Ashes series with its margin and Test-by-Test breakdown, the 100 leading run scorers and the 100 leading wicket takers in Australia against England Tests. The batting and bowling numbers are Ashes figures only, not full Test careers, which is why the match counts look small beside a player’s overall record. The summary strip, the home and away splits and the streaks above are all recomputed from the series table when the page is built, so the prose and the tables cannot drift apart. Records run to the 2021/22 series; anything played since is not yet in this set. Where the source has no value for a column we print a dash rather than an estimate.